Author Isabel Kershner’s Controversial Views On Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

A view from the city near Ayn Al-Hawiyah spring, one of the water springs in the historical Husan district in Jerusalem on July 18, 2023. In 1967, following Israel’s stunning victory in the Six-Day War, its “long-occupied territories” (known from antiquity as biblical Judea and Samaria), were newly settled by “messianic zealots” who, for Kershner, are at “the core of the problem. PHOTO BY ISSAM RIMAWI/GETTY IMAGES 

Isabel Kershner has long been a prolific writer about Israel and its enduring conflict with Palestinians. In Barrier: The Seam of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2005), she explored the security wall built by Israel to protect its people from an unrelenting wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks. Two years later, she began reporting from Jerusalem for The New York Times.

Over time, she became fascinated with “Israel’s battle for its inner soul,” the subtitle of her recently published The Land of Hope and Fear. In her prologue, she describes Israel as “a modern miracle, a regional superpower, and a prosperous and innovative country projecting might to the world.” But her praise recedes as she perceives the entanglement of Israelis in “identity conflicts and culture wars” that threaten to “trample the rule of law and its future as a Jewish liberal democracy.”